Reconstruction of finite Quasi-Probability and Probability from Principles: The Role of Syntactic Locality

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12334v1
• Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:00:08 GMT
• Title: Reconstruction of finite Quasi-Probability and Probability from Principles: The Role of Syntactic Locality
• Authors: Jacopo Surace,
• Abstract summary: Quasi-probabilities appear across diverse areas of physics, but their conceptual foundations remain unclear.<n>We develop a principled framework that derives quasi-probabilities and their conditional calculus from structural consistency requirements.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Quasi-probabilities appear across diverse areas of physics, but their conceptual foundations remain unclear: they are often treated merely as computational tools, and operations like conditioning and Bayes' theorem become ambiguous. We address both issues by developing a principled framework that derives quasi-probabilities and their conditional calculus from structural consistency requirements on how statements are valued across different universes of discourse, understood as finite Boolean algebras of statements.We begin with a universal valuation that assigns definite (possibly complex) values to all statements. The central concept is Syntactic Locality: every universe can be embedded within a larger ambient one, and the universal valuation must behave coherently under such embeddings and restrictions. From a set of structural principles, we prove a representation theorem showing that every admissible valuation can be re-expressed as a finitely additive measure on mutually exclusive statements, mirroring the usual probability sum rule. We call such additive representatives pre-probabilities. This representation is unique up to an additive regraduation freedom. When this freedom can be fixed canonically, pre-probabilities reduce to finite quasi-probabilities, thereby elevating quasi-probability theory from a computational device to a uniquely determined additive representation of universal valuations. Classical finite probabilities arise as the subclass of quasi-probabilities stable under relativisation, i.e., closed under restriction to sub-universes. Finally, the same framework enables us to define a coherent theory of conditionals, yielding a well-defined generalized Bayes' theorem applicable to both pre-probabilities and quasi-probabilities. We conclude by discussing additional regularity conditions, including the role of rational versus irrational probabilities in this setting.

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